137 Representations of travel motivation This indicates that Gregory did not yet have a particular route or destination in mind, but that he felt he should travel further, but did not know yet where to. Possibly this refers back to his divine revelation in which he was instructed to go to a land where he would please God. So is this passage a reminder to the audience of Gregory’s divinely inspired search? The road Gregory chooses to take after this disheartenment, as presented in the narrative, may have come across as resting on chance, dictated by a bypassing monk travelling to Rome.444 However, Ignatius might also have envisioned to communicate that this journey followed a divine plan, rather than resting on chance. The verb used to describe the appearance of the monk travelling to Rome, φαίνεται (in passive voice: come to light, appear), might bring to mind associations of miracles or a divine origin of the appearance. In all other instances in the narrative the verb φαίνω is used to communicate the appearance of phenomena or persons that are made visible but which are usually not visible for humans in ‘ordinary reality’, i.e. miraculous appearances.445 The sentence Φαίνεται οὖν αὐτῷ τις μοναχὸς τὴν ἐπὶ τῇ πρεσβυτέρᾳ Ῥώμῃ διανύων ὁδόν (‘Then there appeared to him a monk who was travelling the road to the old Rome’) might thus communicate a ‘miraculous’ or divinely planned appearance of a monastic traveller, right at the moment when Gregory is at a loss where to go. The particle οὖν moreover connects this sentence to the previous, strengthening the impression of a causal relation between the appearance of the monk and the indecisiveness of Gregory. The ‘motivation’ for journey 11 may thus remind the audience of the general motivation for travelling, which is inspired by a divine communication (for journey 6). Moreover, this representation might communicate that Gregory’s journeys follow a divine plan. Other travel motivations In addition to journeys that the hagiographer interprets to be motivated by Gregory’s monastic development or by the divine revelation discussed above, there are also a few other journeys for which the hagiographer represents Gregory’s travel motivation. Two are motivated by Gregory’s loyalty to other monastic connections; the others are represented as being motivated by Gregory’s desire for spiritual development or integrity – entangled 444 Gregory is said to have travelled with the monk as a servant, because he himself had no proviant with him and so the monk could provide for him (μηδεμίαν ἀφορμὴν τῶν ἐπιτηδείων πρὸς βρῶσιν φερόμενος, ἐκ δὲ τῆς τοῦ συνοδοιπόρου μοναχοῦ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐφοδιαζόμενος χρείας ἦν αὐτῷ διὰ τὴν πορείαν ὑποτασσόμενος καὶ δούλου χρείαν ποιῶν: Life of Gregory of Decapolis 22.6-9). This detail adds to the impression that Gregory takes this opportunity to travel when it was presented to him, but this journey was not part of a thought-out plan (at least not by Gregory himself). In Corinth he decides to go to Sicily (implying that he does not travel further with the monk to Rome, for this monk is never mentioned again in the narrative), but as with many of the other journeys, no motivation is provided. 445 Appearance of (divine) light, in chapters 14-15, or of material aids (in a clear miracle context) in chapter 37, appearances in dreams that function as miraculous visions (appearance of Gregory’s mother who ‘releases’ him from the ‘temptation of unchastity’; and the appearance of the saint in a dream of a monk named Peter, who prayed to the saint for rescue after Peter had been captured by Arabs – the saint tells him not to worry, and indeed Peter is released the next day) in chapters 10 and 88, and the appearance of a demon in chapter 42. 3
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